The present invention relates to technology for managing a plurality of contents that are recorded or stored in a disc recording medium such as large-capacity optical disc, magnetic-optic disc or the like. In particular, the present invention is adapted to managing the contents recorded in a large-capacity disc storage medium. The invention is further adapted to managing the contents recorded in a plurality of disc storage media accommodated in a cartridge.
The following description deals with a case where the disc storage medium is an optical disc. However, the invention is in no way limited to the optical disc only but can be applied to any other disc storage medium such as magnetic-optic disc, magnetic disc or the like disc.
The disc storage medium of a large capacity storing video contents (or musical contents) can be represented by a DVD-ROM. However, the DVD-ROM is constituted in a read-only fashion, and there is no need of changing the whole management data even though a plurality of video contents may have been stored therein. In the DVD-ROM, a plurality of video contents are never stored across the plurality of pieces of disc storage media.
On the other hand, there has been proposed an optical disc of a large capacity capable of storing a plurality of video contents in a piece of or a plurality of pieces of disc storage media.
In order to efficiently store video or audio, furthermore, there have been developed various compression/encoding technologies. For example, there has been known a JPEG video encoding system for encoding a still video in a compressed manner. As a system for encoding dynamic video in a compressed manner, there has been employed an MPEG2 video encoding system. On the other hand, the system for encoding audio signals in a compressed manner can be represented by an MPEG audio encoding system or a DOLBY AC system.
By using an optical disc of a large capacity capable of storing a plurality of video contents in a piece of disc like a video tape, it is allowed to store a plurality of video contents in a piece of optical disc. In this case, it is desired that the titles and contents of the stored video contents (or musical contents) can be recognized as an index at a glance. Without such an index or management data, the user feels it cumbersome to manage the stored video contents (or musical contents).
By using the optical disc of a large capacity which enables the user to record and reproduce the data, the user is allowed to erase or edit the data just like when he uses a video tape. For example, when the video contents are stored, he may wish to cut the data in the commercial message times. To erase the data of commercial message times using the conventional video tape, the data must be recorded again on another video tape excluding the data of commercial message times.
The disc storage medium, on the other hand, is accessible in a random fashion. This, therefore, makes it possible to so edit as to delete the data of commercial message times and to jump to a position from where the succeeding video of the contents starts. Hence, playback operation is effected without causing the user to feel that the data of commercial message times are cut. This is the editing specific to the disc storage medium. However, there is no proposal concerning how the file management data for executing the editing be constituted and edited.
Further, the user himself is allowed to exchange the video and music by editing the contents, and to combine them together not only to erase them. For example, the background music of the video can be entirely exchanged. In effecting this editing, however, nothing has been proposed concerning how the edited contents be managed.
It can further be contrived not to record/playback data to and from a piece of disc storage medium as a unit, but to accommodate a plurality of disc storage media in a cartridge and record/playback data to and from a cartridge as a unit. When the storage of a plurality of contents is taken into consideration, further, the management of the cartridge as a unit is easier. However, nothing has been proposed concerning the management of a number of contents stored in a plurality of pieces of disc storage media in a cartridge.
Besides, no management has been proposed when a plurality of disc storage media are accommodated in a cartridge, and the contents are recorded across the plurality of disc storage media.